Kellie Pickler: The Next 5,358 Drinks Are on Her

And I didn’t just pull my whiskey math out of nowhere. I talked to Jack Daniel’s master distiller Jeff Arnett, who delivered the Single Barrel Tennessee Whiskey to Pickler and her husband, songwriter Kyle Jacobs, earlier this week.

This is what Arnett — who described his job as chief whiskey maker — told me about this particular barrel of Jack Daniel’s.

“I had dinner with Kellie and Kyle a couple of months ago at the Palm in Nashville. And while we were there, I pulled samples from three different barrels out on the table and told them I’d like them to taste them and find one that spoke to them,” he said of the Music City taste test. “That sampling was fun, but delivering the barrel was even more fun.”

Once Pickler and Jacobs settled on their favorite, Arnett got to work.

“Barrels can make anywhere from 200 bottles up to about 300, so with 282 bottles, their barrel is on the higher end. They hit the jackpot. They now have every bottle that particular barrel produced,” he said, adding that once the barrel was emptied, they cleaned, sanded, varnished and branded it before bringing it to Pickler.

“What’s considered to be one shot is an ounce and a-half, so there would be 19 in every single bottle.” (So 282 bottles times 19 shots. That’s how I arrived at 5,358.)

The going rate for all that whiskey depends on where you live and your state taxes, but since a bottle of this whiskey is around $40-50, Arnett valued this gift at somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000.

That’s not a gift you give to just anyone, obviously. But Jack Daniel’s is special to Pickler, and she is special to Jack Daniel’s.